A cracking little adventure movie for you all this week from 1950, made during the early days of the Cold War. ‘Highly Dangerous’ is a fast paced movie starring Margaret Lockwood in very much the action-woman role as an entymologist tasked by the British Imperial Defence Committee to go to a Communist Balkan state (a thinly disguised Albania or Yugoslavia) to spy on the Reds germ warfare plans.

Whilst working in a lab studying insects Frances Grey, played by Lockwood, is approached by British intelligence officers and asked to go to the Balkans and bring back samples of insects that UK intelligence staff believe are being bred to be carriers of disease. She travels to the Iron Curtain country and immediately gets into serious trouble. Her cover is blown and her designated contact murdered. The movie then follows her quest for trustworthy allies who will help her get to the biological warfare lab and secure samples of the insects in order to bring them back to the United Kingdom so that the pathogen can be studied and ultimately countered.

I was delighted to discover this film as it was one I had not heard of before but I was very pleased to find it. A brilliant adventure tale with a strong cast including Dane Clark as a washed up American journalist, Michael Horden as the British laboratory director and most notably Marius Goring as the creepy and dangerous Communist chief of police. There are also some great supporting performances from some of the rest of the cast including Wilfrid Hyde-White as the British Consul Nauton Wayne as the British intelligence officer and Gladys Henson as an outraged airport sandwich bar attendant.

I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I did.